Synchrony is a DEMOPARTY that begins in NEW YORK CITY, continues
on an Amtrak train, and concludes in MONTREAL.

Synchrony is about being creative with computers, and seeing how
computers can produce amazing sorts of animation, graphics, music,
and other experiences. At the end we have COMPOS (competitions)
that are voted on by those who are there at the party. Some people
may work on their entries for these compos for months beforehand;
some, just on the train ride up. People are welcome to enter
remotely, even if they are unable to attend.

We encourage work on today's computers and older computers. As is
usually the case in the demoscene and with demoparties, we build
on the positive force of constructive, old-school hacking, encouraging
deep engagement with how computers function. This can mean programming
them at low levels, for instance, and being aware of how sound
chips and character sets work.

We believe this type of creative engagement should be undertaken
by all sorts of people, and we have developed competition categories
to welcome a diverse group of people and invite them to produce
radical, exciting work.

REGISTRATION & DETAILED INFORMATION

There are three main parts of the party, a CONCERT (performers to
be announced), a TRAIN TRIP, and the COMPOS.

CONCERT

8bit bEtty is a Brooklyn-based wallflower with a pair of headphones and
shakey-at-best command of hyphenated words. Inspiration is drawn
from bleeps, blops, and a penchant for daydreaming.

Business Pastel is the solo project of Billy Murphy
from Long Island, NY. Using exclusively Game Boys and Little
Sound Dj, Billy pulls from numerous styles of music, to better
capture the complex feelings that come with growing up.

DOOM OF THE ROCK is a live coding visualist who was raised
in the east but has settled in the west. When he’s not writing
code on stage in front of people, friends call him Ramsey Nasser.

Sean Lee channels speculative rhythms, broken club beats and syntactic
ephemera through text boxes. He is the main author of gallium.live,
a browser-based environment for livecoding dance music.

A donation will be requested for the CONCERT at Babycastles to support
the performers, including people doing music and visualization.
It is not necessary to buy a ticket/give a donation in advance.
You can offer a donation at the door.

To get from New York to Montréal with the group on the TRAIN TRIP,
you should buy a ticket on train 69 on January 20, 2018. Go to
Amtrak.com to purchase a
ticket.

DETAILS ABOUT AMTRAK TICKET PURCHASE

The quickest way to indicate going from New York Penn Station to
Montréal Gare Central is by using the abbreviations "NYP" and
"MTR".

ONE-WAY: Select 2018-20-01 as the date and if you would like
a one-way ticket just click the "Find Trains" button. There is
only one train going from New York that day, the Adirondack,
train number 69, departing at 8:15am and arriving at 7:11pm.
If you are returning from Montréal some other way (bus, getting
a ride, plane, etc.) or if you live in Montréal but will be in
NYC before the party, this one-way trip may be what you want.

ROUND-TRIP: Those who attend are likely to wish to book a
round trip, either Montréal-NYC-Montréal (if starting from Montréal)
or NYC-Montréal-NYC (if starting from NYC). There is no discount
for round-trip travel on Amtrak; a round-trip ticket costs the
same as two one-way tickets, but it saves time to book both at
once.

People coming along can talk, use computers, buy and consume food
& drink including alcohol, and generally enjoy themselves —
just follow the usual norms of behavior and don't bother other
passengers or the crew! There are power outlets; be aware that
the power quality is not good and at times the power may cut
out entirely. There is wifi, but the quality of wifi is also
not great. At times one can get a cell phone signal, but even
this is not available everywhere along the route.

Since this is a party: Alcohol may be consumed, responsibly, by those
who are of age at Babycastles in NYC, on the train, and at Shopify
during the compos. The Amtrak cafe car has food and drink, including
alcohol, available for sale. However, because the train is US-based
there are no alcohol sales during the final part of the trip
that is in Canada.

The trip involves a border crossing, so appropriate documentation
(a passport) is required and will be checked before boarding.
Please check the information on the Amtrak site, and other official
information if necessary, to ensure that you will be able to
cross the border. There is a customs inspection at the border
and officials check the documents of everyone on the train. It
takes a while.

COMPOS

Once in Montréal we will head immediately to the competitions or
COMPOS, hosted at Shopify, a short walk from the train station.
There is no charge to get into the compos, but there will be
an opportunity to purchase food for delivery there ahead of time.

At some classic demoparties, people stay overnight at the party,
for instance in a sleeping bag, all weekend. This won't be possible
at Synchrony. Both venues (Babycastles and Synchrony) will close.
Enjoy the fact that accommodations are cheapest around the end
of January in both New York and Montréal!

COMPOS GENERAL RULES

The co-organizers of the compos are nom de nom (Nick Montfort) and
unkelben (Jonathan Lessard) and their decisions about the compos
are the final ones.

Submit only work that you yourself have done, individually or collaboratively,
and which had not been previously released. Some previously released
material may be incorporated in a significantly new production.
The compos organizers will ultimately determine how much material
of this sort is allowed, and should be consulted if there is
any question.

Everything entered in any compos, unless it is disqualified, will
be spread -- that is, made available for free download online.
Don't enter work unless you want to share it at the party and
beyond! All entries that are included on the ballot will be released/spread
as soon as is practical.

Your would have used the detailed instructions at (link removed) to send your production to us by email in the format we request.

Remote entries are allowed, but will have an earlier deadline, to
be specified. We will allow competitors to fix problems to whatever
extent time permits.

Imagery or other content that is illegal, egregiously hateful or
offensive, or otherwise unsuitable the environment of a demoparty
will be disqualified and will neither be shown nor appear on
the ballot. We respect that productions can have different sorts
of content, and that people may wish to make strong statements
of various sorts; please, also respect that we are having a fun
party. The organizers' decisions will be final.

Entries must be either entirely original or use only officially licensed
or public domain content, with adequate documentation provided
to the compos organizers. Ripped music and video, for instance,
is not allowed unless permission has been granted for its use.

Because this is an all-ages event or for other reasons, the compos
organizers may use their judgment and choose not to screen some
productions that are nevertheless allowed in a compo; if they
do, these will still be available online to those at the party
and on the ballot. The compos organizers may also skip lengthy
parts of demos, such as scroller sections, once the relevant
effects have been demonstrated.

If there are less than three entries for a compo, the given compo
will either be canceled or (more likely) combined with another
compo. If you wish to withdraw your production from a compo that
is being combined, you may. In the event of a withdrawn production
or a canceled compo, you are of course welcome to release your
productions elsewhere, later.

While this is an international party, it is also a local party. There
will be no guaranteed, high-end "compos machine." You will be
responsible for being able to run your demos on hardware you
bring or that you arrange to be at the party. You can contact
the compos organizers or others to see about borrowing hardware
with particular operating systems installed. Some retro hardware
will be along for the trip, and some computers with high-end
graphics cards are likely to be at Shopify at the end of the
trip. Essentially, though, you need to be able to run your production
on a computer you bring.

For Demo, Nano, and Oldskool Demo entries we ask for a video of the
production. Please make it an mp4 file with h.264 video (30fps,
Main Level <=4.1, two pass encoding, either 1280×720@>=3mbps
or 1920×1080@>=6mbps) and AAC audio (stereo, at least 128kpbs).
Don’t put it in your release archive. If it is not possible for
you to produce this, we will still accept the entry as long as
we can run it on hardware at the compos.

COMPOS CATEGORIES

DEMO

This is the classic category for spectacular executable audiovisual
displays. Usually very recent hardware and a very recent operating
system are assumed. State the graphics hardware your entry is
compatible with on the submission form. Also declare the graphics
settings you want used.

Maximum screening time: 7 minutes (including loading/precalc).

Pressing either ESC or Alt-F4 must end the demo instantly. The entry
has to be delivered as single .zip or .rar file. To check the
demo, we will not install any additional redistributable packages.
It’s good to be sure that any additional DLLs are packed into
your release.

NANO

This category is not unique to Synchrony, but has become closely
associated with the party.

Maximum file size is 256 bytes for the executable. Entries are allowed
in standard interpreted languages that are standard with the
OS, free software, or freeware (e.g., JavaScript, Perl, Processing,
BASIC, QBasic). If the nano is for an interpreted language, the
source file is limited to 256 bytes. If you wish to write an
esoteric language custom-made to play your 256b production, that
will be Wild! It will not, however, be Nano. (That is, a language
you wrote yourself for this compo is not suitable for this compo.)
All other files in the archive will be deleted before showing
the entry in the competition.

Maximum screening time: 7 minutes (including loading/precalc).

You may deliver bigger versions of the 256b along with the compo
version (which must be <=256 bytes) in the same archive. We
will not show any larger version in the compo and voting should
be on the <=256 byte version.

For executables we will not install any additional runtimes, SDKs,
codecs, drivers etc on the compo machine. For interpreted programs
we will not install any libraries, and we will use the current
stable version or a current stable version in the case of languages
such as Python for which there are more than one stable version
(2/3). This means that, among others, msvcr70.dll, msvcr71.dll
and msvcr80.dll will not be available. You may not use the contents
of the Windows “Media” or “Music Samples” directories. These
directories will be deleted on the compo machine. Import by ordinal
for DLLs with non-fixed ordinals is forbidden; so is directly
jumping into DLLs with hardcoded offsets.

Please contact us beforehand if you are going to use any platform
that does not produce a VGA or NTSC signal, and bring a recording
of the production running in this case. Remember that providing
your own recording does not mean we don’t need to see the real
hardware or evidence of the demo running on it. If entries cannot
be projected from real hardware, you must deliver adequate proof
that your entry works on real hardware. You can do this, for
instance, by bringing the hardware with you and showing the organizers,
or by providing a video that shows the program running on hardware
and is not just a screen capture.

Pressing the standard ESC-like key (such as STOP on the Commodore
64) must stop the demo instantly. Demos should load so they can
be RUN in a standard way (on the C64, for instance, loaded at
$801 with a BASIC program to jump to the demo via SYS). For C64:
Please state which SID chip to use (6581/8580). This information
will be displayed on the info slides for your production. We
don't guarantee the desired SID, but we still want people to
know which one you prefer!

WILD

Like the Joker, this category is wild. You may not use fire, spill
fluids, or generate unguarded arcs of electricity or potentially
hazardous wavelengths of light. If your electrical entry needs
to plug into the wall, make sure it runs from a standard 120V
outlet without tripping the breaker. Test it beforehand. Other
than that, please use your common sense and contact us with any
questions. All entries must be demonstrated to the competition
organizer before the deadline if requested.

Maximum screening/performance time: 7 minutes.

When applicable, submissions must include working binaries for the
target platform, and you must prove that your demo works on real
hardware/software.

MUSIC

Only one entry per composer and competition allowed. As is generally
the case for all productions: Do not use any copyrighted material
in your track.

Maximum playing time during the compo is 4 minutes, although the
track itself can be longer.

Please submit an NFO file or ID3 tag along with the media as with
as much detail as possible. This can include author, tools used
and name of the song.

GRAPHICS

We particularly encourage PIXEL ART that engages the way computers
use pixels to build images; CHARACTER GRAPHICS (such as ASCII,
ANSI, and PETSCII) images; and EXECUTABLE graphics (computer
programs that generate images).

Only one entry per artist and competition allowed.

As is always the case, your entry must be new work that has not been
released previously. Also, if you have posted any work in progress
images in public anywhere, your entry will be disqualified. You
may not use photos or other source images in the production itself
that you do not have the rights to use.

Maximum resolution is 1920×1080 pixels. If the image is smaller,
please include an upsampled version in your submission while
preserving the aspect ratio! If the image is smaller than 1920×1080
pixels, we will display it with black borders around the image
as necessary.

Maximum filesize for your final picture is 20 megabytes.

The entries will be shown once on the big screen and uploaded to
the party site after the compo, so visitors can judge the entries
on their own screens.

You must include exactly 4 (four) working stages together with your
final version – the entry. All entries without plausible looking
working stages will be disqualified. The working stages must
have the filename “step1.???”, “step2.???”, “step3.???” and “step4.???”,
where ??? is the extension of whatever format you use. Please
put your 4 working stages into a seperate folder in your zip
archive!

When uploading your entry you must include a list of the tools used,
to be displayed on the big screen. Only still images are allowed
in this compo, no animations.

PEOPLE

nom de nom (lead organizer, compos co-director), based in New York and Boston,
writes very small productions for the Commodore 64 and other
platforms, often with language and poetry as a focus. http://nickm.com

GlandeurLessard / Unkelben (compos co-director) has been organizing demoparties in Montréal
since 1999 mainly because nobody else would do it. Besides that,
he's a university professor making games, researching games,
playing games ... not yet tired of games.

Frank (NYC organizer) is a life-sized human with a human face stretched
over bone. He transmits the origin of the universe through his
vessel at a frequency that recalls the primordial ooze and heralds
the age of the Sun. He lives in a small room with his microwave.
http://a-o.in

EMiSpicer (concert
organizer) is a 30-something good-for-nothing. She is best known
for her work as a documentation photographer and events organizer.